


ending

by astralis



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-09
Updated: 2009-03-09
Packaged: 2017-11-16 17:28:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralis/pseuds/astralis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little look into Racetrack's head, set after The Oath and Blood on the Scales.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ending

So this is how it ends.

Maggie lies awake long into the night, staring at the bars of her cage. Her mattress is thin, thinner than on _Galactica_ , and she can feel the metal frame of the bunk pressing into her hip. There's a baby living in the civvie section that cries half the night and its mother walks it up and down between the cages where the prisoners live trying to soothe it. After all, no one cares whether the prisoners get a good night's sleep.

Ten days she's been here. Her cage is fifteen paces by twenty, and the bunks take up most of the floor space. She shares it with a middle-aged woman who hasn't said a word since Maggie arrived and whose name she doesn't know. They get let out three times a day, row by row, to get their rations and use the head. On the fourth day, she was allowed a shower. The civvies use most of the water supply.

It's the end of the world and there are still one hundred and fifty seven people worth locking up. Eight of them came over from _Galactica_ after the mutiny, stripped of rank and even of the privilege of being held in the brig. They aren't allowed to see each other.

On the eleventh day, an hour after breakfast, when Maggie's trying to forget that she's already hungry again, one of the guards unlocks the cage and beckons to her. "You've got a visitor," he says. He won't let her out the door without handcuffs on.

Maggie hasn't known anyone have a visitor the whole time she's been here. She follows the guard down the aisle formed by rows of cages, and listens to swearing and laughing and crying as she walks past. Who the frak thinks she's worth visiting? Hoshi, maybe, or Hot Dog, or - she can't think of another or.

Through the civvie section now, and people step aside to make room. At this end of the ship, the cages are locked to keep people _out_ and the residents get to move about as they please: that's the difference between them and the prisoners. That and they smell a bit better.

She's ushered into a small windowless room with nothing in it but a few beat-up chairs and Apollo. Lee Adama, anyway. He's standing in the middle of the room looking stiff and uncomfortable. His expression doesn't change when he sees her.

"Lieutenant."

"Not any more." Maggie can't remember the last time she heard the sound of her own voice.

He's clean-shaven, wearing a clean suit. Hell, he's even shined his frakking shoes. Maggie hasn't washed her hair in two weeks and she's wearing men's overalls that are so big she's had to roll up the legs to keep from tripping over as she walks.

"No."

The guard's standing in the corner of the room. He's probably concerned she's going to finish what he thinks she started back on _Galactica_.

"What are you doing here?"

"I just." He closes his mouth, and looks away. "Racetrack. Why?"

She knows what he's asking. Why did she agree to help Gaeta and Zarek toss Adama and Roslin off the throne. Why she stood by as Zarek killed Laird. Why she delivered Lee himself into the hands of his would-be killers.

"All the times we flew together," he says.

"I didn't know." Didn't know they were going to kill him. A weak excuse, but at least it's the truth.

"You could have stopped them."

"They would have killed me, too."

Her crimes: mutiny and sedition. Riot. Conspiracy. She'd pleaded guilty, but it wouldn't have mattered if she hadn't. Guilty until proven innocent, and there was no evidence of innocence.

"Maybe."

"Why did you come?"

"To understand."

The handcuffs are too tight, and making her wrists hurt. "What the _frak_ don't you understand?"

"Why?"

Round and round in frakking circles. "Because I thought it was the right thing to do. Because Gaeta was my friend and I believed in him."

"I thought he was my friend, too. Hell, I thought you and I were friends."

"It wasn't about you."

"They tried to kill me," Apollo says, protesting, like he still can't believe it and like it's the one thing that matters most.

"They tried to kill a lot of people." They succeeded, too. The noise of a wrench smashing a skull, watching a man die in front of her: she can't forget that. Won't forget that. It replays itself in her head every single frakking night.

"Racetrack."

"We can't trust the Cylons," she says, because frak it, she wants him to understand why she got involved with a mutiny. Hell, she just wants someone with a bit of power to remember how dangerous the Cylons are. _That's_ why she did it, in the end. She swore to protect the people of the Colonies the first time she put on the uniform. _That's_ what she was doing. Damn it, _somebody_ had to, and the Admiral had lost his spine.

"You flew with Athena."

"That's different."

"Why?"

"Helo. Hera. Athena proved herself. But you can't trust Cylons. Not ever. And they can't just undo what they did to us. Boomer shot the Old Man. I was there. An Eight killed a Raptor full of people. Good people. Pilots. And Adama and Roslin pretended it never happened." Her voice is too high-pitched, too emotional. She needs to be rational, logical, calm. Hard, when she's wearing handcuffs and living in a cage.

He's not getting it. Maybe he doesn't want to.

"You're a good pilot, Racetrack."

"Maggie," she says.

"What?"

She swallows. "Maggie. I'm no longer an officer of the Colonial Fleet."

"For that matter, neither am I."

"You chose to give it up." She's never understood how he could willingly replace the freedom of the sky and the stars with petty bickering and politics, thinking he could change things by words rather than deeds.

"You had a choice."

"No. I didn't. I couldn't sit back and watch your father and Laura Roslin leading us on a frakking fool's journey to gods know where, with a Cylon as XO and a whole basestar full of them trailing along behind us like we're suddenly best friends."

"They can help us."

"Do you really think they'll turn their backs on their own kind when Cavil comes for us? And even if they did, that can't make it better. That won't bring back my girlfriend, or my little sister, or my parents. It won't even bring back my frakking _cat_." The words come tumbling out of her faster than she'd intended, bringing with them the raw pain she's never been able to escape. Maybe he can forget the people he lost, but she can't and she won't.

He looks away. Sighs. Looks back at her. "I wish it hadn't been you."

Maggie tells the truth, again, and wonders if he'll ever believe it. "I don't know they were going to kill you. Zarek told me you'd be taken into custody and have a fair trial."

"And you believed him?"

"Baltar got a trial."

"They had a _gun_ to my _head_."

"There was only one of me. One wrong move and I'd have been dead too." Maggie's voice cracks. She's not frakking crying in front of frakking Lee Adama and a frakking guard. She's _not_.

She's _not_.

"Racetrack." Then he stops, and changes his mind about whatever he was going to say. "They treating you guys okay?"

"Like the scum we are," she says, pretending that she doesn't care and it doesn't matter, swiping awkwardly at her cheeks with the back of her hand to brush away the tears. They're heavy, these handcuffs.

"Racetrack."

"No. It's fine."

Apollo hesitates, like he only just figured out he's seeing her cry for the first and last time. "You were a damn good pilot. It's a big loss to the Fleet."

"Hear you've got Cylons flying CAP. I'm no big loss."

"They miss you. The other pilots."

"Yeah. Me too."

Ever since she was a kid she'd dreamed of joining the Fleet. Not out of some overwhelming sense of patriotic duty, not to get away from her home and family, but for the simple reason that she wanted to live among the stars. She'd dreamed of making Commander, even Admiral someday. Having a Battlestar and a crew of her own, being the Virgonese farm girl who hit the Fleet jackpot and made her family proud.

It wasn't supposed to end this way. She wasn't supposed to be caged up in the very place Tom Zarek had once called home. Her father - well, she's glad he's not here to see this. It would've broken his heart, and that would have broken hers.

"I should go," Apollo says. There's no regret in his tone.

Back to _Galactica_ , where they both belong. Maggie wonders who flew him over here. Probably a Cylon making itself comfortable at the controls of her Raptor.

"Yeah." Maggie takes a breath, long and deep and shaky. She thinks maybe the tears are fading. "Do you know how Skulls is?"

"He's doing okay. Cottle thinks he can be discharged in a week or so, and then he'll be transferred here."

"They won't let me see him, will they?"

Apollo shakes his head as he turns away from her. "Probably not. Goodbye, Maggie."

Aware of the guard's eyes on her, she keeps her back straight and chin up. No more tears. (So say we all.) "Goodbye, Lee."

When he's gone, she turns to the guard and waits to be taken back to her cage.


End file.
